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Grand Am
IN THE COCKPIT: Alex Davison, Winton V8s
I finished 16th but if anyone ever wondered why you never give up, those points actually jumped me up a spot in the championship.
Alex Davison  |  Posted May 24, 2011  
Davison is having a much better year as the team continues to deliver solid results at most rounds. (IRWIN Racing)
Davison's V8 Blog on SPEED.com

Over the course of the V8 Supercar season we get to travel all over Australia; to Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth and Darwin to name a few. Last weekend we raced at Winton. This is definitely not a place I would expect most people to ever have heard of. Winton is about as regional as it gets, it doesn’t even have any shops. Winton must have about a hundred people living in it. It’s near a town called Benalla which is two and a half hours north of Melbourne. Winton is the home of Winton Raceway and this event is a big race meet for country Victoria (Melbourne is the capital of Victoria).

This region is part of the V8 heartland and the race attracts people from all over, including Melbourne, so it’s always reasonably well attended. There are campgrounds right up close to the track as well, so there’s a real country atmosphere at this race.

Winton is not my favourite track to drive. It’s very tight, twisty and narrow, it’s difficult to get a nice flow going and very tricky to get a good car set up. It's one of the hardest tracks we go to. To get the car going well there is such a compromise, you need to get the car turning well because the track is so tight and twisty and because of the slow corners you need to get the power down, so it’s difficult to fix both ends of the car at the one time. That's the battle we fight at Winton.

In Perth a few weeks ago, the IRWIN Ford suffered from pretty bad tyre degradation. We actually had a good car; it was fast in qualifying but couldn’t hold onto its tyres over race distance. The other two cars in the team fared better, we compared the data and it showed that the cars were almost identical. In the end I think we were probably just a little bit high on tyre pressures over the weekend and that's what hurt us.

Winton is a completely different kettle of fish. Given our recent problems with tyre wear; this was at the forefront of our minds. We needed a car that looked after its tyres. You don’t know until you are half way through the race if your tyre life is going to be good and how your car will be, but it worked out well over the weekend.

On Saturday I made a conscious effort to push as hard as I could, while taking care of the tyres. I qualified just outside of the top ten and watched several cars pull out a lead on me, but I didn’t panic, I just kept to a good pace. My engineer Dan came to me on the radio and told me that the guys that initially pulled away were coming back to me, and that I was one of the fastest cars on the track, so I just kept the pace going. Yes, I could have pushed and caught them because the IRWIN Ford was feeling really good, but I tried to maintain the pace and with five laps to go I nailed them. My tyres were fresher, my pace was good and I was able to pass. To finish sixth was satisfying.

It was the same on Sunday, I qualified a very disappointing 14th, I just didn’t quite have the pace needed to put us in a good starting place. I didn’t make a great start then got knocked off the track putting me to the rear of the grid. After this I put my head down and pushed as hard as I could, while again looking after my tyres. The IRWIN Ford felt great and was about the fastest car on the track, I made up a heap of places, but while this was happening my battery was essentially going flat, so during the first pit stop the guys replaced it. This ended any opportunity of a good result. I finished 16th but if anyone ever wondered why you never give up, those points actually jumped me up a spot in the championship. The gap is a little larger but I’m still there.

The big news over the last fortnight has been the partial sale of V8 Supercars to an investment firm. Prior to the sale the teams owned 75% of the sport, now the teams own 40%. It’s a reduction in ownership, but it has injected AU$300million into the sport. All team owners basically receive a cheque for AU$4million per licence, which is a nice pay day.

At this stage it doesn’t affect the drivers at all; it makes no difference to me directly. For team owners like Ross and Jimmy Stone (my race team owners), who have worked hard for a lot of years to build up their business and have probably had to sacrifice a fair bit, it means they have more to invest back into the team and the sport, which is a good thing.

V8 Supercars is a strong category and the new owners will work with the sport to ensure it continues to grow. More overseas rounds are being looked into which is great. Fortunately the sport will expand but not at the expense of local events. So the fans still get to attend their favourite event but will get to enjoy more events on television.

Personally I look forward to travelling overseas; it’s good for the sport's profile because it really opens us up and makes us visible to the rest of the world. Racing in the Middle East has meant people in Europe and America know who we are now, which wasn’t the case five years ago.

I have no idea if it's ever going to happen but I'd love to go V8 Supercar racing in the US. There are so many fantastic road courses in America. They are old school tracks that haven’t been turned into Formula One friendly tracks, like so many circuits in Europe, so they have plenty of character.

Personally, I haven't been to that many track in the States, but I loved Road America, it is a fantastic circuit; fast, flowing and undulating. I’d love to drive the IRWIN Tools Ford there, that would be cool!

Till next time,

Alex

Alex Davison is a third-generation racing driver having followed on from his father Richard Davison, an Australian F2 champion, and his late grandfather Lex Davison, a four-time Australian Formula 1 Grand Prix winner. Alex has raced Porsches internationally and has spent the last two seasons racing his IRWIN Tools Ford Falcon in the V8 Supercars Championship for Stone Brothers Racing, one of the biggest teams in the V8 pit lane.

Learn more about Alex and the IRWIN team at www.irwinracing.com.au.
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